Unusual People
by AtheneMiranda
Summary: Military life takes all sorts. Scott Dolph/Vamp, getting-together fic.


[This fic was originally written for a challenge at mgs_slash.]

***

They all came to the wedding. Dead Cell were like that, as close as family, and Scott supposed that taking one into your family was opening a door to them all.

Years ago, the first time Helena had ever asked Reggie Jackson to come meet her father and mother, Scott had thought him pretty shy - which he figured was all well and good in a cadet who was dating a general's daughter, though he tried to make it easy for the kid. He'd made teasing jokes about how he should've joined the Marines, and Jackson had awkwardly confessed that he was headed for Special Forces.

Special Forces attracted unusual people. Scott could only wish the guy his best, and he'd hoped, for Helena's sake, that it wasn't to the CIA - bunch of spooks - or to FOXHOUND, because those freaks cared for nothing except themselves and their unit and were mostly headed, fast, for a sorry end.

When he found out it was Dead Cell, he began to wonder what the hell was wrong with the kid, but somehow he figured Helena would be alright.

They were close comrades, and they considered themselves to be a respectable anti-terrorist squad who could turn out for each other's happiest days in white ties and crisp dress uniforms and take pride in what a tight and prestigious group they were. Scott couldn't _imagine_ why they made the other guests nervous. There was the drunk one whose twitchy feet never strayed more than three feet from the buffet table. There was the old one who was telling stories no one believed about the Korean War, stories Scott had been told were still classified. There was the Asian guy with sleek hair paled by chlorine; his uniform seemed to damp and rumple just from standing in the sun.

There was the one who danced. He didn't seem to care who with. He barely sat out a number. Scott saw him dance with the maid of honour, with Scott's wife, with his fat buddy, and he even asked Helena but she had eyes for only one man that night.

Scott caught him over a drink in one of those rare moments of stillness, or something near it. The guy was almost swaying, a glass of red wine tipping from side to side in his in hand, tie loose and two shirt buttons missing. (That was the maid of honour. She was a pretty enthusiastic dancing partner.) Scott watched a bead of sweat run diagonally down his brow, and wondered how anyone could be as affected by cheesy wedding music as this guy clearly was. He wasn't even drunk.

It was getting late. And Scott _was_ kinda drunk, and he was so happy for his daughter that it was like the nice polite lines between one unit and another didn't exist any more, and there was always a reason and he suddenly felt a pressing need to know it. He hadn't even asked _Jackson_, and could only hope that Helena had, but...

"So why are you in Dead Cell?"

They weren't mad like FOXHOUND-mad. Just _unusual_. Dead Cell were people the US military had a _unique need _for. But you didn't ask about that shit - not unless you were gone on drink and joy and your own authority and you genuinely didn't care if you got an answer or not. Asking was bad enough. Asking was admitting that he was curious.

Asking meant inviting eye contact, cool and deep as seawater, and carrying such a fierce shine that Scott felt like he'd shrunk an inch just from that one look. So what if he was the Marine commandant, those eyes said? A general could drown and die as easily as a private, and he was in dangerous waters. He got a faint smile for his trouble, and felt the sharks were welcoming. "I'll tell you," the unkempt foreigner said. "But only if you dance with me."

Huh. It was his _daughter's wedding_. He was drunk, and it was worth it to give her and her husband something to laugh about, right? Scott couldn't refuse. And the fingers on his arms were cold but full of energy, guiding Scott through steps he didn't think he knew, leading him so closely it was like the other man was becoming his shadow. Somewhere far away, he could hear Helena laughing and Nina tutting and the heckling of some old family friends. He couldn't hear the music any more. He only knew when it stopped because the other put his lips near Scott's ear and said, "Dead Cell call me Vamp. I cannot die," and let him go.

The words stayed lodged in the back of his head, like teeth digging deep and slowly injecting venom. He arranged to work more with Dead Cell - training exercises, strategy meetings. His generals probably thought it was a mark of favour to Jackson - nepotism was an ugly word but everyone knew how it went, and yeah, it sure was nice to see the kid from time to time. But if they thought that was why, then they were wrong.

_Dead wrong._

*

Scott had been rehearsing his excuses for thirty years. He had litanies - libraries - of them, primed for deployment on any occasion. It had got easier since the early days, when he used to look in the mirror and recite them silently, then go home and somehow keep the nerve to hold his baby daughter and look Nina in the eye. _It wasn't cheating because it was only one time_, or _It wasn't cheating because of the combat high_, or _It wasn't cheating because you were so far away and it had been so many months and you hadn't even sent a letter since January_, or _It wasn't cheating because she was a buddy_, or _It wasn't cheating because he needed it more than I did_, or _It wasn't cheating_.

He saw Vamp for the first time in two months and every word of every one of them was clamouring in his mind all at once as if they were a klaxon warning that even _looking_ at him like this was a mortal sin.

It wasn't like they'd been getting to know each other. How the hell would he even do that? There was no small talk with Vamp. His entire life was classified. It was big talk or nothing. There was no hanging back together after briefings. No knowing looks. There were just looks. There was no knowing. There was the icy numbness spreading out from his brain-stem, draining his mind of the morals and memories and words.

He thought of all the young soldiers who'd been killed executing his orders, and of how precious it would be to have just _one_ who could not die.

It wasn't cheating because _they hadn't done anything except one dance at a wedding party_ and he didn't know if he could look Nina in the eye any more.

*

The fat guy was talking about Metal Gear. At length. The last few months, intel groups hadn't talked about much else, and they were nowhere near running the topic dry.

"...difficult to do anything to impede their movement, not even with the most powerful conventional mines but -"

Down in Columbia, FARC were holding their president's daughter to ransom for the blueprints. The Iranians were pretending they had one. The Chinese were pretending they didn't have one, but some hacker from an NGO had uncovered evidence to the contrary. Right here right now Dead Cell were briefing Marine Command on what it meant for counterterrorist operations; trouble, and then some.

"- a tactical nuclear device would do the trick, so equipping squads with -"

Jackson interrupted. "Not a feasible response to an urban attack." Fatman huffed, and shot him a glare that screamed _'killjoy.'_ Jackson returned his look almost affectionately - that's Dead Cell, tight as always. "With current equipment there wouldn't be much one could do about a terrorist Metal Gear attack except negotiate."

And they all knew President Johnson disapproved of negotiating. "So what are you suggesting?"

"A specific technological solution." It was the first time Vamp had spoken, and Scott's breath froze in his throat. Those words were huge, expensive and dangerous, and they all knew it. Vamp did that, he'd realised; sent shocks through the world with each word and gesture.

Before Scott could catch his thoughts, the fat guy was talking again. "You're right, we need a new high explosive option that's capable of -"

Vamp shook his head. "It is not that simple. Only one kind of weapon could take on a Metal Gear." The general on Scott's left muttered something about explaining that to the budgetting committee at the Department of Defence, but Scott knew, as soon as Vamp had said it, that it was the only answer there could be.

Metal Gear, the Sears Administration's gift to the world's battlefields. Not a machine, just the blueprints of a machine, an idea running loose in the world - a weapon that couldn't die. You built Metal Gears to kill Metal Gears and came not one step closer to eliminating them. It had come down in flames six months ago, but for the Marines and for Dead Cell, the Sears Administration would never be over. The chill in Vamp's eyes, in Scott's head, was eating up his feelings about Commanders-in-Chief, about victory, about his ability to keep living.

He decided there and then to hang back after the meeting and ask Vamp to come back to his office, while there was still something else left. It wasn't cheating because he was out of other options. Nina was barely a shadow in his mind; there was nothing now except Scott and the things that didn't die.

*

They walked away together, silently; Scott was seeing a world full of monsters, didn't know what to say to the one that walked in step with him, thought he was becoming one himself, because Metal Gear and god damn Sears had done that to the whole damn world.

What the hell was there to say? Vamp sat gracefully on the edge of Scott's huge mahogany desk, refusing his offer of brandy with a wave - a stickler for not drinking on duty, or a man with different tastes. He poured himself a glass anyway - anything to keep out the cold, too late for that now he had that undying flesh in his dreams _and_ in his office, a leg folded on the desk and his long coat brushing the rug on the floor. A mouthful of brandy inside him, and he could almost feel his heart again, though the words were far, far gone -

"That's enough. No more keeping silence while you talk to yourself like that." Vamp was watching him, hands twining in his lap, looking thoughtful, looking...hungry. "I know what you asked me here for."

"You don't." It wasn't a denial. It wasn't a lie, it was just - not like any of the other times he hadn't been cheating on Nina. "You've been - on my mind and -"

"I know. I can tell by the way you look at yourself."

"At _myself_?" he repeated numbly.

Vamp nodded. "As everyone does. They look at themselves and see their future. And you are afraid of it. And you are fascinated by it. And when you wish to see it, you look at...me."

Vamp slid to his feet and leaned over Scott's chair, and he almost flinched when the man - the not-man, the undying - touched his gloved fingers to Scott's face. They stroked from his brow to the corner of his lips, as if outlining the boundary of his vision. "You look for yourself in unusual places."

"You're an unusual person." All he could say, and he said it to his own reflection in Vamp's eyes. But the smile, the lips curling open, that was all Vamp, cold hard lips that met his own in with an utterly unexpected gentleness. He could feel his arms held lightly. He could not move. Teeth brushed against Scott's tongue, and he realised what a deadly knife was sheathed within that soft embrace.

He couldn't have measured how long it was before Vamp drew away to reply. "So what is it you think I am?"

Scott wasn't cruel enough to answer. Vamp was all the hungers a man shouldn't have. Vamp was all the world's _shouldn't_s, all his own _mustn't_s, a wrongness in human shape. He thought Vamp was human, and humans are so damn easy to love.

_Vamp, I think you're so wrong you're the only thing that's right._

And he thought Vamp's eyes were taking his excuses and draining all meaning from them, pulling them down in their blue waters. There was no excusing what they would do together - Scott could see the line he'd never crossed before far behind him now.

This was cheating, because he was falling in love.

***


End file.
